Beyond free will: Understanding approaches to agency and their suitability for Bandersnatch-like titles
Citation:
Anna Rezk and Mads Haahr, Beyond free will: Understanding approaches to agency and their suitability for Bandersnatch-like titles, Entertainment Computing (Elsevier), 43, 100500, 2022, 1 - 11Download Item:
Abstract:
When Bandersnatch (2018) was released on Netflix, interactive storytelling became accessible to a mainstream
audience on a new scale. While this interactive film lets audiences make binary choices, the influence they have
over the plot is limited, and at times the correlation between a choice and the resulting story is difficult to
recognize. Although it can be argued that this constitutes a thematic design choice for this particular title, we
think there is general room for improvement for this type of highly restrictive, branching structure film, in order
to make the format applicable to a wider range of themes and stories. In this paper, Bandersnatch is examined as a
representative of its format in order to develop and identify approaches to increasing agency. We use Hartmut
Koenitz’s SPP model to understand the title and its format, and the hermeneutic strip extension to assess the
perceived agency. Then, we introduce and examine potential approaches to increased agency from other
interactive narratives to understand their adaptability and impact. Our discussion concludes that the most
promising design idea for increased agency in Bandersnatch-like titles is invisible agency; an approach in which a
player model is generated based on identifiable traits in the audience behaviour and used to select matching
plotlines. This approach would allow audiences to see the results of their choices immediately, but also allow the
impact of the choices to accumulate as the plot progresses, thereby increasing the overall sense of agency.
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/haahrmDescription:
PUBLISHED
Author: Haahr, Mads
Type of material:
Journal ArticleCollections
Series/Report no:
Entertainment Computing (Elsevier)43
100500
Availability:
Full text availableKeywords:
Narrative momentum, Player model, Replayability, Kaleidoscopic form, Black Mirror Bandersnatch, Hermeneutics, Double-hermeneutic-circle, SPP model, Involuntary agency, Obscured agency, Invisible agency, Agency, IDN, Interactive digital narrativeSubject (TCD):
Creative TechnologiesDOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2022.100500ISSN:
1875-9521Metadata
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